China has held rounds of talks with the Taliban and asked the Muslim militants to hold direct talks with the Afghan government, the head of Afghanistan’s power-sharing government said on Friday.
China has held “one, two or three” rounds of talks with the Taliban in the past few months, Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah said at a conference organized by an Indian media group.
“They have asked the Taliban to have talks directly with the Afghan government; that’s a good message,” Abdullah said, adding that he did not know what the outcome of China’s efforts would be.
Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) last month said during a visit to Islamabad that Beijing was willing to help mediate talks to end the Afghan war, but Chinese officials have not provided many details.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Hong Lei (洪磊) last week said that reports that its diplomats in Islamabad met last month with Taliban representatives “do not accord with reality.”
Abdullah, speaking at the India Today Conclave in New Delhi, did not say where the meetings took place.
He said Afghanistan had begun to improve relations with China under former Afghan president Hamid Karzai, with the idea that Beijing could use its influence over Pakistan to help broker peace talks.
China has close ties with Pakistan, which is widely believed to harbor the Taliban’s top leaders and exert considerable control over the group.
Last month, a Pakistani army delegation brought word to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani that Taliban leaders had signaled that they were willing to open talks, according to senior Pakistani and Afghan officials.
Since then, senior representatives of the militant group have visited Islamabad, where they were told to end a rift between two leaders that could undermine a peace process, two Taliban sources said.
Abdullah’s backing of the nascent process to negotiate an end to the 13-year insurgency is crucial because many of his supporters represent the vehement anti-Taliban wing that fought against the Muslim extremists when they held power until 2001.
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